Jenny Craig and Slim Fast are not torture... How about Kimkins?
Please note that this is NOT a political blog. Set aside the politics of this article, and focus on this part about using reduced calories as an interrogation technique:
In an effort to rationalize the use of dietary manipulation on detainees, Bush administration officials turned to Slim Fast and Jenny Craig.
In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general's office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.
"While detainees subject to dietary manipulation are obviously situated differently from individuals who voluntarily engage in commercial weight-loss programs, we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1000 kcal/day for sustain periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision," read the footnote. "While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique."
So a 1000 calorie diet is not torture, it just feels like it. But what about the "lower the better" Kimkins diet? Since most Kimkins members are eating less than that, and many only a third that much... does Kimkins pass the torture test? Hmmmm... I'd ask the people damaged by Kimkins, over at the Kimkins Survivors blog, many with long term or permanent physical and emotional damage from the experience!
I was really scratching my head at the logic of the bolded parts. It's medically safe because people do it voluntarily???? That people do it is instructive?
¡Ay, caramba!
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